Games are HAPPY

Games bring joy – I came to the this conclusion when asking questions about why people love to play games and why they spend so much time on it.

Often we see happiness in some external attributes: money, wealth, status in society. When we receive it, we feel good, but not for long. We enjoy things and we want more. Moreover, in order to achieve the some significant state of happiness we need large amounts of money, possessions and fame.

The more we try to find happiness in the external factors, the more difficult it is to get it. For this issue there is a special term - "hedonic adaptation". Greater consumption has led to a harder to achieve state of happiness that also lasts for less time. Thus, we search for happiness in external attributes – but the truth is: at some point we cease to receive pleasure from them or from anything else.

All of our feelings: love, passion, happiness, euphoria, depression are a set of chemical elements inside our body. Games provide an easy way to create this chemistry in us.

On the other hand, by concentrating on some internal sources of pleasure and focusing happiness on the activity that brings positive emotions, personal growth and social cohesion we attain long-term happiness. When gaming we are not looking for a particular prize and just enjoy the process of our development.

We are involved in such activity because it itself and not its result brings us pleasure. It's pretty simple and logical –to achieve the result it takes us always longer than the pleasure of the actual time of the materialization of this result lasts. So enjoying the first is much better than the second.

This was written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his "Farewell Letter": "... the whole world wants to live in the mountains, not realizing that true happiness is as we climb the mountain."

In other words, when the source of positive emotions is yourself it can not be exhausted.

Games in their pure form are intended to meet only the internal mechanisms of happiness: they will not help us to improve our social status, help to make money or become famous. In life, if someone tells you to solve a problem, which can take hundreds of hours, you're obviously not happy. But in a game we all constantly criticize the length of it, because if you can finish a game in just 10 hours – it is a bad one.

During games we do not really relax but work hard. It does not matter that the actual work in the game is unreal - it is a real emotional return. This is a contradiction to popular belief about happiness - everyone seems to believe how I want to live an easy life, to have everything and yet do not ant to do anything. But this does not bring happiness. The good fortune is in the process of achieving all of it.

A good game is gives a positive emotion. Everyone understands this - the success of the game and profit of the development company depends on how much satisfaction they deliver or on how happy they make people.

Games are more attractive than the reality - they have clear goals which are always possible to achieve and from which you get satisfaction. That's why gamers get hooked on a game and suffer addiction.

The concept of "gameplay” appeared for a reason. Good gameplay is when the game is enjoyable and fun to play throughout the entire time. It turns out that it is not only the result but also the process itself that play a big role.

Gameplay is a good concept to enhance the human motivational system in both positive and negative ways.

Education fuelled by Technology

I am a big promoter of education and I recently read an article about this project at MIT which seems to be a brilliant first step into the enrichment of our society.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced the restart of its online courses. The purpose of the program MITx is to make education more affordable, even for those who did not follow the instruction "Theory and Practice" on how to enroll in this college.

MITx will finally be launched in spring - it will be an interactive learning platform, which makes it possible to organize the course material in a way so you can study at your own pace. The creators of the program emphasize that this is not a full version of basic training but MITx includes online laboratories, the possibility of communication between students and an individual assessment of each student’s work. Graduates of courses will get a MITx certificate by completion.

The program is designed not only to those who have not yet enrolled in college but MITx organizers are also hoping that online learning will expand the educational experience of students from the campus with tools that complement and enrich their studies in laboratories and classrooms. The second goal is to form a virtual community of MIT students around the world.

L. Rafael Reif, the head of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the same time and Computer Sciences, is responsible for this inovvative project. According to his plan the development of this idea should be combined with the scientific study of online learning opportunities, which will be conducted by the Institute: "Many members of the MIT began experimenting with the integration of online tools within the system of classical university education on campus. We will promote these experiments, most of which will lead to new and unconventional technology education of students from other cities and countries. Both parts of this project are extremely important for the future of high-quality, affordable and accessible education. "

Online courses were developed on the MIT OpenCourseWare platform - a free resource, which includes almost all the MIT educational materials of undergraduates and graduates. There are about 2100 MIT courses, which are used by over 100 million people: including programs in mathematics, physics and computer science, medical and nuclear research, engineering and even architecture, management, history and gender studies. Each course includes lecture notes, bibliography, questions for the exam and professor’s contact information.

MIT President Susan Hokfild believes that anyone who is willing and able to study in a MIT program, should have the opportunity to participate in the best educational experiment, which allows to use internet technology: "The success of the OpenCourseWare indicates a high demand for courses at MIT and inspires us to make content more accessible. Now we are developing new approaches for online learning. "

Education in MITx will be free. Universities and schools can use the same software as part of their education.

Start with the Little Ones

Lately I came across this funny new start-up company that develops an app for educational purposes and it seems to be a great hit!

I find it very interesting, especially as it is build upon simple but very effective psychological concept regarding students’ behavior. This is how technology and psychology change our little society.

In August last year, a new start-up was created called Class Dojo - an application for smartphones that allows school teachers to control the behaviour and interaction of their students. Today it is used by tens of thousands of teachers in 30 countries, and the American NBC television called Class Dojo best educational company in 2011.

The application works like this: each student in the class has their own profile with their number of points. Points are awarded for achievements (for example, creativity and persistence) and taken away for misconduct: being late or rude. The more points you have, the higher you go on the level scale. The teacher projects an interface directly to the whiteboard, so that the whole class sees how happy or upset their avatars are. The result of this approach is immediate: the first week the children are delightful about their profiles, and therefore change their behaviour.

The secret of the big success by Class Dojo is embedded in several major principles. The first one is the feedback in real time - immediately after the student has done something good they get acknowledgement. . For example, Cameron wrote an interesting report - he gets a +1 for creativity and for determination. His avatar - brown alien with one eye – is jumping and dancing. The second principle is to focus on merits, rather than offenses: Children need praise.

A typical process of education is based on punishment after the student has done something bad. Class Dojo, on the other hand, prevents the committing of misdemeanors, focusing on the achievements. Also it appears that everyone loves getting points, even if they do not mean anything.

Class Dojo has the mort important effect on an audience ranging from kindergarten kids up to eighth grade school students. The structure of the application is the same for all ages and works equally well. Responsible for this is the psychology professor at Stanford and Columbia University, who participated in the design. However, the only feature that need some alteration are the avatars in the form of pink dragons, which are liked by the five-year-olds, but are not too impressive to high school students. This problem will be solve soon by the founder of Class Dojo Sam Chaudhary and his partner, who will be working on it soon.

Besides the new designs of the avatars, in the future there will be interfaces for pupils and their parents. While the parents are involved in the process only as observers - every teacher can send the parents their child's profile with the points, which he/she has earned.

I believe this application is a small step to a better future since the development of human personality traits from an early age leads to positive changes in all socio-economic spheres of life: from success in your career to the happy personal relationships.

Medicine and the Future

Most common problems of modern medicine are known to be: the inaccessibility of health services to the population, the uneven distribution of qualified doctors, and the lack of an integrated approach.

Nevertheless, we believe that medical services will become more technological, more massive, more interactive and more social in the near future.

One of the aids to make health services more accessible are mobile phones and their associated applications - on the one hand, ensuring the supervision of specialists in those areas where there is not enough, on the other hand, bringing medicine into every home. Familiar and accessible devices will be easier to understand – since a majority of patient is not familiar with medical terms the data only means little to them. Many laboratories and clinics do not have the right to transfer test results to the patient and, additionally, the transfer makes no sense due to their complexity. The magazine Wired (first magazine to publish an interactive article as iPad app) criticizes the traditional format of medical records and demands that we have the right to know what's going on in our body, and therefore should be offered clear information.

The data should be recorded so as to be convenient and clear for both doctor and patient, medical record could be completed online, and the results of surveys should be accessible from your tablet at home. Furthermore, there should be a possibility in the same program to enter data of well-being or symptoms when they appear.

For instance, the Patientslikeme project was created when one of its founders was diagnosed with ALS. His family thought about whether they could improve the quality of his life and how it can be done. Based on this experience, a website was created where everyone could share how they themselves cope with their illness and their knowledge about how it can be overcome. The project laid the foundations for crowdsourcing in medicine: if you structure the stories of patients, a clear system can be formed from them and it will allow everyone to find their diagnosis. But, above all, it will help to answer the main question - " what is the best outcome I can expect and what do I do to achieve it. "

In order to understand how the website is structured watch the TED talk video.

Modern medicine has succeeded in treating infectious diseases, but everything that relates to chronicle diseases - from depression to cancer - has not progressed that far. From a pragmatic point of view, these diseases are expensive, the prognosis is poor, plus the patient requires daily care. A diabetic patient has, for example, not only the restriction on not having anything sweet each day, but every day of their lives they have to measure their blood pressure, blood sugar levels and they have to take medication, based on their vital signs. Chronicle patients visit their doctors, at best, once a month, while they actually would need a doctor every day to monitor health, receive feedback, monitor the administration of drugs and provide treatment. In contrast to the healthy people, who need to lose a little bit of weight or lower blood pressure, chronically ill patients need for more radical changes in their lives and the participation of various experts. A part of these procedures can be replaced by a program called the EMR (electronical medical record), which is becoming more prevalent. For example, Fitbit or DirectLife collect the necessary information about the pressure, weight, blood sugar and send it to a machine, which summarizes the findings and makes a Google Health record. (Google Health is being retired since it did not catch on)

Medical technologies continue to evolve, but this does not mean that hospitals will cease to exist or their role will diminish. Clinics will be more multi-functional, flexible and will be equipped with a variety of media technologies, such as the hospital 2020.

Work Work Work

Technology shapes our world and the people living in it. Every part of our lives is affected by new innovations and so is our work.

In 62% of U.S. companies the employees can work remotely, and 57% of these companies offer flexible schedules. For now the Freelancers Union has 42 million members and if it continues like this, the office in the traditional sense will disappear by 2021.

An increasingly important role take mobile, so-called plugandplay-offices, which can be located anywhere, such as hotels and shopping centers.

Mobile workstations can be placed anywhere, including the courtyard of our house, university campus or a park opposite the office. The shell will not only provide protection from rain and shade in sunny weather, but also will provide electricity powered by a solar battery in order to feature a socket for a laptop.

Furthermore, current developments of tablets will result in them becoming more powerful and will replace everything we get in the ordinary office: a reliable computer, fax, scanner. Going to the office will no longer be an issue for most of us: we just get out of the house and take our tablet with us. Technology will make people more mobile, but this does not mean that they will actually work less. Experts predict that we will be working even more: the complete opposite will be the case: employees will be even available during holidays!

At home it is very difficult to organize a working day, so most companies decide to pay a lot of money to rent an office space. The trick of making this an advantage is to let people select and organize their office themselves. Freelancers can choose among the existing projects, for example, Loosecubes - the biggest space for collaborative work. Loosecubes includes 1,700 jobs in 350 cities in 47 countries. The project helps freelancers rent free workplace in existing offices, personally selecting the place and the people with whom they want to work.

                    

Project Title Loosecubes tops the bad experience of the traditional office-blocks. Fighting boredom with all the other workers leads to a variety of interior design solutions, among these are some crazy options - for example, office space in the greenhouse in a transparent soundproof bubbles or underground mines.

 

The bubble office is also interactive: it is able to change the temperature, humidity and lighting in accordance with the functional status of the employee (for example, if the smart chair realizes that the back of the person who sits in it is too tight, it will give a massage).

It is amazing to see what we can do with a little piece of technology and how it can help us in our everyday life. All we need to do is be creative!

TechART

Once again it is time for a new blog about the influence technology has on our society!!!

This time I would like to talk about the connection of art and technology and how both of these elements are used by artists to create a new type of style.

Apparently the art of the future will be called a hybrid - using the latest achievements of science and technology. Models of the hybrid art develop in different genres and disciplines, using the achievements of biology, physics, informatics, research in artificial intelligence and information visualization.

Hybrid art is going  beyond the scope of various art genres, it combines art and scientific research, social and political orientation, Pop culture. The boundaries between painting, sculpture, installations, films and performances are more and more blurred. There are new directions: Media Architecture, Geospatial storytelling, the use of robotics and artificial life.

In order to get a feel for the new stream of creativity I will show some interesting example by different artists.

One of the most famous representatives of the fusion of art - James Tarell - an artist working with light and space. Tarell has a degree in experimental psychology and his work - this is an interdisciplinary one, a hybrid design that combines the psychology of perception, the physics of light and art.

Among the other artists working with light - Leo Villareal. His works are reminiscent of the meteor rain, starry sky and sunset the sun's rays. This light-actor likes to say that his art depends on the technology, but not solely to it.

Chris Levine - another light artist, best known for the first holographic portrait of Elizabeth II, with which he attempted to reconcile tradition and modernity. The artist has worked for various clients from jewelers Swarovski (which created the world's largest crystal) to the British Council (installed in the Tokyo office).

Holographic images are fruitfully engaged in the project Musion. Camaya known for their work related to the appearance of animated characters as Gorillaz on stage.

Kids

It feels like they have an excruciating need to know our whereabouts at all times, or to have an up-to-date background check on any new friendship we encounter. These are all simple parental instincts.

Furthermore, video games, movies, and music records all share one thing in common: they have ratings. These ratings allow parents to choose whether or not the media is appropriate for their child to watch. 

Even pay-per-view television has parental control, allowing the setup of a secure pin code.

But what about when it comes to downloading or watching movies online? What about the billions of applications that we have available nowadays for our smartphones?

The majority of mobile apps do not provide any privacy information, which makes it hard for mothers and fathers to decide which apps are safe to let their kids use. Nevertheless, some mobile companies do provide warnings and notifications when a user tries to download applications with a certain kind of content.

I read this article about kids and parents downloading apps and the problems it brings along!

What do you think about it???

Copyright

Many times the questions about copyright and ownership arise. Especially in the case of open source software it might become a problem to identify the real owner of a specific piece of work.

 I tried to figure out how the legal aspect in an open source project is laid out since this seems to make the situation of protecting intellectual property a fair amount harder. In one of my courses at university we have been working with OpenStack a cloud based computing program. It is an open source project with 1197 participants (at least 250 of them code contributors) from 92 companies and more participation announced all of the time.  Now, with some many people working on one and the same thing who owns the copyright and who gets a license?

According to an article I read the rights are distributed as follows: “OpenStack has the attributes that make open source developers happy: copyrights are kept by the contributors, the project is under the Apache Software License (ASL) 2.0, and the project is governed by a board with eight out of twelve elected seats.”

Apparently OpenStack is one of the projects that works just fine the way it is run despite the fear of corporate-led projects. One example would be Sun Microsystems's acquisition by Oracle and the ongoing problems that have ensued for some of the open source projects that Sun once led (OpenOffice.org, Hudson, MySQL, and Java).

An interview with Jonathan Bryce, founder of The Rackspace Cloud and member of the OpenStack Project Policy Board (PPB) also revealed some insight into the copyright policies and the success of OpenStack.

"We don't own the copyright," Bryce explained, "[contributors] decide who owns the code." With all contributions licensed under ASL 2.0, there's not a huge potential for Rackspace to hijack the OpenStack project.

So far no copyright issues have arisen in the OpenStack environment but as we could see on other projects the open source factor can bring nasty lawsuits and big trouble. 

FIRST blog

I came across this article yesterday regarding privacy violation and since we talked about privacy and data protection in a recent lecture, I thought this might be a good first topic to blog about.

Hipster and Path are the two Apple apps that by “mistake” uploaded a user’s address book information with all their contacts without any explicit permission. Of course, both of the companies apologized publicly for the inconvenience caused. But I wonder if this is enough. Considering that they violated so many people’s privacy, how can it be so easy to undo this kind of action? I mean, is it good enough to have a decent PR agent that will publish an official apology in the newspaper and on a blog to make things right again? Hipster apparently hosted a summit to discuss best practices and privacy standards as a way to straighten out their error. Also it was promised that all the uploaded private data was deleted immediately as they came to be aware of the problem.

It seems like in most cases the only compensation user’s get is a simple apology but should we really let them get away so easily? There is a bunch of privacy laws that “supposedly” protect a consumer but are they used effectively?

I believe that almost non of the users that experienced the privacy invasion by either of the two software applications actually raise their voice to complain about it in a legal form.

This brings me to the point that WE users need to care more about our own privacy in order to make companies/organizations be more careful when it comes down to protecting it. 

If anyone is interested in the article itself, here is the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16962129